A New Zealand judge has ruled that the raid of Kim Dotcom's house was done with an invalid search warrant.

During the raid that took place in January, the police seized millions of dollars, including luxury cars, art and computers. However, the judge says that the warrant for the search fell "well short" of explaining what Dotcom exactly did wrong.

High Court Judge Justice Helen Winkelmann said that "the warrants did not adequately describe" the crimes in question. She claims that these are general warrants and are invalid as such.

Kim Schmitz, more commonly known as Kim Dotcom, has apparently made $175 million with Megaupload since 2005. He is currently out on bail. Don't ask how he paid for it.

A US judge has dismissed Apple's injunction claim against Motorola, although he's left them an option of appeal.

The final 38-page ruling reads:"Apple is complaining that Motorola's phones as a whole ripped off the iPhone as a whole (...) But Motorola's desire to sell products that compete with the iPhone is a separate harm - and a perfectly legal one - from any harm caused by patent infringement." The judge argued that Apple failed to prove that it lost market share, brand recognition or customer goodwill to Motorola.

Analysts aren't surprised at the outcome. Namely, the judge was inclined to dismiss the case and had cancelled a jury trial earlier.

Patent consultant Florian Mueller said he is sure that the case will be appealed to the Federal Circuit. He added that Apple "didn't do its homework in terms of expert reports and witnesses" to get something out of the case.

Seeing as how nobody is interested in backing down, we're likely to hear more news on this front.

A US bloke is suing Apple for making all sorts of claims about its voice search machine Siri, which it could not deliver.

Apple made all sorts of claims about Siri, which was about the only thing new in its iPhone 4S. Frank Fazio filed a federal class action lawsuit against Apple saying Siri commercials are “fundamentally and designedly false and misleading.

Judging by the commercials, Apple’s iPhone Speech Interpretation and Recognition Interface (Siri) is meant to be taken seriously. John Malkovich is in one commercial, lounging in a living room asking Siri for Linguica. Siri tells him there are five restaurants close to him that serve it.

However Fazio said that he asked Siri for directions to a certain place, or to locate a store. Siri either did not understand what he was asking or after a very long wait time responded with the wrong answer.

After a five year court battle over Unreal Engine 3, a judge has awarded Epic Games $4.45 Million. Sources have told the Escapist magazine that Human developer Silicon Knights will have to pay Epic Games $4.45 million in damages.

Silicon Knights hoped to make $54 million from suing Epic. Instead it owes them a lot of cash. The ruling followed two recent case milestones, neither of which had foreshadowed much hope for Silicon Knights.

Last week, the court ruled that due to an invalid expert testimony, no claim against Epic could be awarded more than a dollar in recompense. All claims of fraud, negligent misrepresentation, unfair competition, and unfair and deceptive trade practices previously levied were dismissed outright.

Epic remained tight-lipped regarding the specifics of its counterclaims since the announcement of their filing in 2007. Most of the claims centered around copyright infringement of the Unreal Engine 3's code.

Silicon Knights' initial lawsuit depended on the fact that Epic had misrepresented the engine, forcing it's developers to build a better one from scratch. Epic claimed that during this time, Silicon Knights had full access to the Unreal Engine 3's code, and may have infringed upon it while reconstructing the core of Too Human. It looks like the Judge believed them.

Apple’s request for a preliminary injunction against Samsung’s products was denied on Friday. This means that Galaxy S 4G, Infuse 4G, Droid Charge and Galaxy Tab 10.1 will not be pulled from retail in the US and, most likely, that legal battles will be Apple’s main business for years to come.

California district judge Lucy Koh said that Apple could not prove that it would be “irreparably harmed” by sales of Samsung’s devices. Koh wrote:"Indeed, given the evidence Samsung presented, it seems likely that a major beneficiary of an injunction would be other smartphone manufacturers."

It was concluded that Apple’s design complaints, including device size, screen size and speaker position, do not hold water. Thus, Apple cannot be the only one that launches such devices. The company is yet to comment on the ruling.

Samsung’s spokesperson, on the other hand, welcomed the ruling and said it confirms that Apple’s arguments are void. More importantly, the company says that it has “raised substantial questions about the validity of Apple design patents.”

The case continues on July 30, 2012, but we’re sure we’ll hear much more by then.

Patent troll Apple has a tough choice Down Under. It can either give up hounding its number one competitor in the courts or reveal how many iPads it actually sells.

Apple has a secrecy policy which makes the Freemasons look tame. Normally if a sales figure is given out, it is whispered from mouth to ear, syllable by syllable, and one of the parties must chew a cyanide tablet immediately afterwards.

However a judge in a Sydney court has told Jobs' Mob that if Apple wants to prove that Samsung's Galaxy Tab would affect sales of its iPad in Australia, then it should reveal sales figures of its popular tablet in countries where both the iPad and Galaxy Tab are available. Federal Court Justice Annabelle Bennett told the court that unless Apple puts on evidence showing the impact in the US or UK, she can’t draw any positive assumptions.

This is of course heresy in the Apple Cargo cult which normally expects the forces of law to do what it tells it. This is what happened in SanFrancisco where real police helped Apple security pose as coppers to search someone's house without a warrant. Apple doesn’t like revealing sales figures and it is just possible that it might shut down the case rather than having to break one of its central creeds.

A US trade judge has told search engine outfit Google to sod off when it comes to a case between Microsoft and Motorola over patents allegedly used by Android. Google tried to block the testimony of a Microsoft expert witness Robert Stevenson claiming that he had seen the Android source code without permission.

Judge Theodore Essex denied Google's motion and said there was no basis to discern from Google's statement whether Google made a reasonable, good-faith effort to resolve the matter with Microsoft. The judge pointed out that only parties in a complaint are allowed to file a motion for sanctions like the one Google demanded.

German patent analyst Florian Mueller said that Google's attempt to block Stevenson was no more than a speed bump in the case, which he sees as potentially harmful to Android if Microsoft wins. He said that Google was extremely afraid of the outcome of this particular ITC investigation.

If this investigation finds Motorola and, in fact, all Android devices to infringe various valid Microsoft patents, all of Google's hardware partners will have to pay royalties to Microsoft.

A US judge denied Apple’s preliminary injunction against Amazon, which would make the latter stop using the name ‘App Store’. The issue will be resolved starting October 2012, when the next trial date has been set, leaving Amazon free to use the name by that date.

Apple argued that the term ‘App Store’ is trademark and will confuse customers about potential connection to Apple or other services that use the name. Amazon said that it is a generic term that can hardly be trademarked and the judge seems to have agreed.

The injunction has been dismissed due to Apple not establishing likelihood of confusion in its examples. However, although the judge did not agree that the term is entirely generic, she admittedly had been skeptical of Apple winning the case.

In a move which could scare the willies off search engine outfits like Google, a Roman judge has told Yahoo that it must alter its search engine algorithm so that pirated links are not ranked so highly. The makers of the award-winning Iranian film drama About Elly sued Yahoo complaining that pirated clips and links to illegal film downloads were appearing in Yahoo Video searches and demanded that the company remove the videos from the search results.

Yahoo didn’t answer and the the case was taken up by Open Gate, a regulatory lobby group run by Tullio Camiglieri, a former journalist and executive in Rupert Murdoch’s Sky Italia. According to Reppublica, the complaint centred on the claim that the distributor could not make a profit because Yahoo's search results were giving a higher priority to the pirates.

The judge agreed and ordered Yahoo to do more to “inhibit” copyright infringement. If his ruling holds, it could put search engines on notice that they are responsible for links to illegal downloads. This could also mean that Open Gate, could sue Google and YouTube in Italy over similar claims.

The court recognised that content policing by Search Engins was impossible. But where it went wrong was failing to act on the alleged infringement after it was notified of it.

A daft US law which insisted that all Internet content be censored so that it would not harm a seven year old child has been tossed out by a Judge. The law was drafted in Massachusetts which is famous for the Salem Witch trials and has been coming up with stupid court cases ever since.

Lawmakers came up with the idea that they should have a law covering "matter harmful to minors" and that it should cover the World Wide Wibble. The politicians were spooked when a state supreme court ruled that the "matter" which could harm minors did not legally include electronic transmissions. This overturned the conviction of a man who engaged in sex chat with someone who he believed to be 13.

The politicians rushed through a law “to protect children” without engaging brain. They extended "harmful to minors" clauses to the Internet, dirty books, films, pamphlets, pictures, plays, dances, and apparently statues.

So this means that all email, instant messages, text messages, and any other communication created by means of use of the Internet or wireless network, all had to be written so that they did not harm a seven year old child. Not surprisingly the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) complained about the law and said that it was too broad.

It meant that every communication on the Internet may potentially be received by a minor and therefore may potentially be the basis for prosecution. To make matter worse, because Internet speakers have no means to restrict minors in Massachusetts from accessing their communications, the Act meant that the entire Internet had to be written to a level suitable for young children.

Federal judge Rya Zobel agreed and issuing a preliminary injunction on the April amendments for violating the First Amendment right to free speech. The problem, she said was that the new law failed to mention that the content had to be targeted at a minor.